The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story

by Hyeonseo Lee

  Copyright

  William Collins

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  WilliamCollinsBooks.com

  This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2015

  Copyright © Hyeonseo Lee 2015

  Hyeonseo Lee asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Maps by John Gilkes

  Cover photograph by kind permission of the author.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780007554836

  Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 9780007554867

  Version: 2015-05-15

  Praise

  ‘I have spoken with countless numbers of defectors over the years. When I first met Hyeonseo Lee, the unflinching manner in which she told her story, although full of sadness and hurt, was inspirational. That is the story now written in this book.

  As a young girl living on the North Korea–China border, she had grown up aware of two different worlds – the monochrome of her homeland and the bright, vibrant colours of another world just across the river. Her act of escape marked a new chapter in her life. But once she crossed the border, she learned that the warm glow of China’s alluring lights was not meant for her.

  She experienced hunger, coldness, fear, terror, threats and pursuit. All this she had to endure simply for being a North Korean refugee. Every time she navigated treacherous terrain and overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles, she had to change her name to protect her new identity. She became the Girl with Seven Names.

  But one thing that she held on to was her humanity, ever stronger as she continuously sublimated her hardships into hope. This is a sad and beautiful story of a girl who could not even keep her name, yet overcame all with the identity of what it is to be human.’

  Jang Jin-sung, founder of New Focus International and author of Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee – A Look Inside North Korea

  ‘This is a powerful story of an escapee from North Korea. In the hallowed meeting rooms of the United Nations in New York, ambassadors from North Korea recently sought to shout down stories like this. But these voices will not be silenced. Eventually freedom will be restored. History will vindicate Hyeonseo Lee and those like her for the risks they ran so that their bodies and their minds could be free. And so that we could know the truth.’

  The Honourable Michael Kirby, Chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights Abuses in North Korea, 2013–14

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  PRAISE

  MAPS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  INTRODUCTION

  PROLOGUE

  Part One: The Greatest Nation on Earth

  1. A train through the mountains

  2. The city at the edge of the world

  3. The eyes on the wall

  4. The lady in black

  5. The man beneath the bridge

  6. The red shoes

  7. Boomtown

  8. The secret photograph

  9. To be a good communist

  10. ‘Rocky island’

  11. ‘The house is cursed’

  12. Tragedy at the bridge

  13. Sunlight on dark water

  14. ‘The great heart has stopped beating’

  15. Girlfriend of a hoodlum

  16. ‘By the time you read this, the five of us will no longer exist in this world’

  17. The lights of Changbai

  18. Over the ice

  Part Two: To the Heart of the Dragon

  19. A Visit to Mr Ahn

  20. Home truths

  21. The suitor

  22. The wedding trap

  23. Shenyang girl

  24. Guilt call

  25. The men from the South

  26. Interrogation

  27. The plan

  28. The gang

  29. The comfort of moonlight

  30. The biggest, brashest city in Asia

  31. Career woman

  32. A connection to Hyesan

  33. The teddy-bear conversations

  34. The tormenting of Min-ho

  35. The love shock

  36. Destination Seoul

  Part Three: Journey into Darkness

  37. ‘Welcome to Korea’

  38. The women

  39. House of Unity

  40. The learning race

  41. Waiting for

  42. A place of ghosts and wild dogs

  43. An impossible dilemma

  44. Journey into night

  45. Under a vast Asian sky

  46. Lost in Laos

  47. Whatever it takes

  48. The kindness of strangers

  49. Shuttle diplomacy

  50. Long wait for freedom

  51. A series of small miracles

  52. ‘I am prepared to die’

  53. The beauty of a free mind

  EPILOGUE

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  PICTURE SECTION

  INDEX

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Author’s Note

  To protect relatives and friends still in North Korea, I have changed some names in this book and withheld other details. Otherwise, all the events described happened as I remembered or was told about them.

  Introduction

  13 February 2013

  Long Beach, California

  My name is Hyeonseo Lee.

  It is not the name I was born with, nor one of the names forced on me, at different times, by circumstance. But it is the one I gave myself, once I’d reached freedom. Hyeon means sunshine. Seo means good fortune. I chose it so that I would live my life in light and warmth, and not return to the shadow.

  I am standing in the wings of a large stage, listening to the hundreds of people in the auditorium. A woman has just blushed my face with a soft brush and a microphone is being attached to me. I worry that it will pick up the sound of my heart, which is thumping in my ears. Someone asks me if I’m ready.

  ‘I’m ready,’ I say, though I do not feel it.

  The next thing I know I’m hearing an amplified announcement. A voice is saying my name. I am being introduced.

  A noise like the sea rises in the auditorium. Many hands are clapping. My nerves begin to flutter wildly.

  I’m stepping onto the stage.

  I feel terrified suddenly. My legs have turned to paper. The spotlights are faraway suns, dazzling me. I can’t make out any faces in the audience.

  Somehow I motion my body toward the centre of the stage. I inhale slowly to steady my breathing, and swallow hard.

  This is the first time I will tell my story in English, a language still new to me. The journey to this moment has been a long one.

  The audience is silent.

  I begin to speak.

  I hear my voice trembling. I’m telling them about the girl who grew up believing her nation to be the
greatest on earth, and who witnessed her first public execution at the age of seven. I’m telling them about the night she fled across a frozen river, and how she realized, too late, that she could never go home to her family. I describe the consequences of that night and the terrible events that followed, years later.

  Twice I feel tears coming. I pause for an instant, and blink them back.

  Among those of us who were born in North Korea and who have escaped it, the story I am telling is not an uncommon one. But I can feel the impact it is having on the people in the audience at this conference. They are shocked. They are probably asking themselves why a country such as mine still exists in the world.

  Perhaps it would be even harder for them to understand that I still love my country and miss it very much. I miss its snowy mountains in winter, the smell of kerosene and burning coal. I miss my childhood there, the safety of my father’s embrace, and sleeping on the heated floor. I should be comfortable with my new life, but I’m still the girl from Hyesan who longs to eat noodles with her family at their favourite restaurant. I miss my bicycle and the view across the river into China.

  Leaving North Korea is not like leaving any other country. It is more like leaving another universe. I will never truly be free of its gravity, no matter how far I journey. Even for those who have suffered unimaginably there and have escaped hell, life in the free world can be so challenging that many struggle to come to terms with it and find happiness. A small number of them even give up, and return to live in that dark place, as I was tempted to do, many times.

  My reality, however, is that I cannot go back. I may dream about freedom in North Korea, but nearly seventy years after its creation, it remains as closed and as cruel as ever. By the time it might ever be safe for me to return, I will probably be a stranger in my own land.

  As I read back through this book, I see that it is a story of my awakening, a long and difficult coming of age. I have come to accept that as a North Korean defector I am an outsider in the world. An exile. Try as I may to fit into South Korean society, I do not feel that I will ever fully be accepted as a South Korean. More important, I don’t think I myself will fully accept this as my identity. I went there too late, aged twenty-eight. The simple solution to my problem of identity is to say I am Korean, but there is no such nation. The single Korea does not exist.

  I would like to shed my North Korean identity, erase the mark it has made on me. But I can’t. I’m not sure why this is so, but I suspect it is because I had a happy childhood. As children we have a need, as our awareness of the larger world develops, to feel part of something bigger than family, to belong to a nation. The next step is to identify with humanity, as a global citizen. But in me this development got stuck. I grew up knowing almost nothing of the outside world except as it was perceived through the lens of the regime. And when I left, I discovered only gradually that my country is a byword, everywhere, for evil. But I did not know this years ago, when my identity was forming. I thought life in North Korea was normal. Its customs and rulers became strange only with time and distance.

  Thus I must say that North Korea is my country. I love it. But I want it to become good. My country is my family and the many good people I knew there. So how could I not be a patriot?

  This is my story. I hope that it will allow a glimpse of the world I escaped. I hope it will encourage others like myself, who are struggling to cope with new lives their imaginations never prepared them for. I hope that the world will begin, finally, to listen to them, and to act.

  Prologue

  I was awoken by my mother’s cry. Min-ho, my kid brother, was still asleep on the floor next to me. The next thing I knew our father came crashing into the room, yelling ‘Wake up!’ He yanked us up by our arms and herded us, pushed us, out of the room. My mother was behind him, shrieking. It was evening and almost dark. The sky was clear. Min-ho was dazed from sleep. Outside on the street we turned and saw oily black smoke pouring from our kitchen window and dark flames licking the outside wall.

  To my astonishment, my father was running back into the house.

  A strange roar, a wind rushing inward, swept past us. We heard a whumpf. The tiles on one side of the roof collapsed, and a fireball like a bright orange chrysanthemum rose into the sky, illuminating the street. One side of the house was ablaze. Thick, tar-black smoke was belching from the other windows.

  Where was my father?

  Our neighbours were suddenly all around us. Someone was throwing a bucket of water – as if that would quench this blaze. We heard the groan and splitting of wood and then the rest of the roof went up in flames.

  I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t even breathing. My father wasn’t coming out of the house.

  It must only have been seconds but it seemed like minutes. He emerged, running toward us, coughing his lungs up. He was blackened by smoke, his face glistening. Under each arm he was holding two flat, rectangular objects.

  He wasn’t thinking of our possessions, or our savings. He’d rescued the portraits. I was thirteen, old enough to understand what was at stake.

  Later my mother explained what had happened. Some soldiers had given my father a large can of aviation fuel as a bribe. The can was in the kitchen, which was where we had an iron stove that burned yontan – the circular charcoal cakes used for heating everywhere in North Korea. She was in the act of decanting the fuel into another container when it slipped from her hands and splashed onto the coals. The combustion was explosive. The neighbours must have wondered what on earth she’d been cooking.

  A wall of intense heat was advancing from the blaze. Min-ho began to wail. I was holding our mother’s hand. My father put the portraits down with great care, then hugged the three of us – a public display of affection that was rare between my parents.

  Huddled together, watching the remains of our home collapse in a rippling glow, the neighbours might have felt sorry for us. My father looked a sight – his face was filthy and his new civilian suit ruined. And my mother, who was house-proud and always made an effort to dress nicely, was seeing her best bowls and clothes go up in smoke.

  Yet what struck me most was that neither of my parents seemed that upset. Our home was just a low, two-room house with state-issue furniture, common in North Korea. It’s hard to imagine now how anyone would have missed it. But my parents’ reaction made a strong impression on me. The four of us were together and safe – that was all that mattered to them.

  This is when I understood that we can do without almost anything – our home, even our country. But we will never do without other people, and we will never do without family.

  The whole street had seen my father save the portraits, an act of heroism that would win a citizen an official commendation. As it turned out, matters had gone too far for that. We did not know it, but he was already under surveillance.

  PART ONE

  The Greatest Nation on Earth

  Chapter 1

  A train through the mountains

  One morning in the late summer of 1977, a young woman said goodbye to her sisters on the platform of Hyesan Station and boarded the train for Pyongyang. She had received official permission to visit her brother there. She was so excited she’d slept little the night before. The Capital of the Revolution was, to her mind, a mythic and futuristic place. A trip there was a rare treat.

  The air was still cool and smelled of fresh lumber from the nearby mill; the humidity was not yet too high. Her ticket was for a window seat. The train set off, creaking slowly southward along the old Hyesan Line through steep pine-clad mountains and over shaded gorges. Now and then a white-water river could be glimpsed far below. But as the journey progressed she found herself being distracted from the scenery.

  The carriage was full of young military officers returning to the capital in high spirits. She thought them annoying at first, but soon caught herself smiling at their banter, along with the other passengers. The officers invited everyone in the carriage to join them in playin
g games – word games and dice games – to pass the time. When the young woman lost a round, she was told that her forfeit was to sing a song.

  The carriage fell quiet. She looked down at the floor, gathered her courage, and stood up, keeping herself steady by holding on to the luggage rack. She was twenty-two years old. Her shiny black hair was pinned back for the journey. She wore a white cotton frock printed with small red flowers. The song she sang was from a popular North Korean movie of that year called The Story of a General. She sang it well, with sweet, high notes. When she finished, everyone in the carriage broke into a round of applause.

  She sat back down. A grandmother was sitting on the outside seat and her granddaughter sat between them. Suddenly a young officer in a grey-blue uniform was standing over them. He introduced himself with great courtesy to the grandmother. Then he picked up the little girl, took the seat next to the young woman, and sat the little girl on his lap.

  ‘Tell me your name,’ was the first thing he said.

  This was how my mother met my father.

  He sounded very sure of himself. And he spoke with a Pyongyang lilt that made my mother feel uncouth and coarse with her northern Hyesan accent. But he soon put her at her ease. He was from Hyesan himself, he said, but had spent many years in Pyongyang and was ashamed to admit to her that he had lost his accent. She kept her eyes lowered but would steal quick glances at him. He wasn’t handsome in the conventional way – he had thick eyebrows and strong, prominent cheekbones – but she was rather taken with his martial bearing and his self-assurance.

  He said he thought her frock was pretty and she gave a shy smile. She liked to dress well because she thought this made up for plain and ordinary looks. In fact she was prettier than she knew. The long journey passed quickly. As they talked she noticed him repeatedly look at her with an earnestness she had not experienced before from a man. It made her face feel hot and flushed.

  He asked her how old she was. Then he said, very formally: ‘Would it be acceptable to you if I were to write you a letter?’